[garethrowlands]

> Indeed, the general idea of imperative assembly comes to mind as the ultimate "core" for most software.

That's not what functional core, imperative shell means though. It's a given that CPUs aren't functional. The advice is for people programming in languages that have expressions - ruby, in the case of the original talk. The functional paradigm mostly assumes automatic memory management.

[taeric]

Right, I was just using that as "at the extreme" and how it largely exists to allow you to put a functional feel on top of the imperative below it.

I'm sympathetic to the idea, as you can see it in most instruction manuals that people are likely to consume. The vast majority of which (all of them?) are imperative in nature. There is something about the "for the humans" layer being imperative. Step by step, if you will.

I don't know that it fully works, though. I do think you are well served being consistent in how you layer something. Where all code at a given layer should probably stick to the same styles. But knowing which should be the outer and which the inner? I'm not clear that we have to pick, here. Feel free to have more than two layers. :D